Avatar Adventures

Last week I was sitting at home and I started ruminating about what I was going to do with the children in the coming months. It’s winter, it’s cold, and I needed a little invigorating. I started thinking about the winter games we could play…make igloos, go sledding and skiing, pretend we are snowflakes, warm ourselves in front of roaring fires, OK. I was excited about the new season; I had a game plan.

Then I saw Avatar. I am probably preaching to the choir by now because it truly does seem like the country has been overtaken by this movie (with good reason) but I loved it and when I came into my classroom Monday morning it became clear to me that we would not be building igloos, we would be playing Avatar.

I asked my children if they knew what an Avatar was. They are young so most of them had not seen the movie but they still knew what I was referring to…there are posters all over this city! I was met with excited chatter. OK. I told them that Avatars have tribes, just like the one here at St. Thomas More Playgroup, and that being a part of a tribe means we are all connected.

I then asked them to close their eyes. I described Pandora, a beautiful world full of incredible, bright colors. I had them imagine towering trees with leaves that were as green as the forest, bright, colorful birds and sweeping blue skies. Then I told them there was a boy in Pandora who sees an incredibly beautiful flower. The flower is the most beautiful thing the boy has even seen and he is curious about it. “Do you know what curious means?” I asked the children. They nodded and shouted out a few examples. “Good! Well, the boy is curious, so curious he wants to touch the flower but when he does it turns in on itself and falls to the ground.” The children’s eyes got big with wonder. “Let’s all be flowers and I am going to be the little boy and when the music stops I am going to come around and touch you. What will you do when I come around and touch you if I am the little boy and you are the flower?”

“Curl up and fall to the ground!”

The game was a success and lots of giggles ensued.

Next I explained to them that the Avatars let foreigners into their world but only if they could be trusted. I told them that there were glowing, jelly-like things that could tell if a person who entered Pandora was good or not. If the glowing jelly landed on you then all of the Avatars would know immediately that you were a good person. “I am going to be the glowing jelly,” I explained to them, “and when I land on you I want you to tell me why you are a good person, because I know each and every one of you is.”

I went around and landed atop each child’s head. Their answers varied from, “I am good because I help my mommy,” to, “I am good because I helped Julianne with her lunch,” but what I noticed is that most of what they said focused on community, on sharing. Yes! “That definitely makes you a wonderful person,” I told the children, encouraging their introspection.

I then told them that on Pandora things worked because of energy and the relationships of energy between the tribe. I asked them to think about how they feel when they get ready to come down here for a Kate Day. “Happy!” they said.
“You feel excited, right?” I asked them. “Well, what if when you came down here I was grumpy, what kind of energy would that be?”

“Sad energy,” one boy said.

“That’s right, that would not be good energy and you know what? It might make you feel bad, too. See we affect people with our energy and bad energy can make good energy feel not so good.” They nodded in agreement. “So when you come down to see me I am excited to see you and our good energy works off each other and we have a great time together.”

I then told them about the birds of Pandora and how they were very mean. But when they came towards the Avatars the Avatars stood strong. I told each child to make their brave stance. Because the Avatars stood strong, the bird’s negative energy could not affect the Avatar’s good energy and instead the Avatar’s good energy transformed the bird’s negative, and they became friends.

Because we are a tribe, we affect one another. We affect each other with the words we use and the actions we take. All of us. If we give nice words we will get nice words back and if we perform nice actions we will get nice actions back. Isn’t this a lesson we can all learn from?

If we are having a bad day it is not just us that is brought down by our negative energy, the people around us are, too. So if the mean birds of life come, stand strong, make your brave stance, and allow the good energy all around you to come in. And when it does, go out and share it. We can make the world a Pandora simply by being positive.

Smile and Be Strong,

Kate